It is a dramatic legal story….but with a twist. And it’s a hell of a twist having to do with a well-known prosecutor and a stripper.

First, here are the basics:

On Monday, the California Supreme Court decided unanimously that San Quentin inmate Adam Miranda should not have been sentenced to death twenty years ago because senior District Attorney Curt Hazell—and three sitting judges (formerly prosecutors), Judge Lance Ito, San Diego Judge Roger W. Krauel, and Orange County Superior Court Judge Frederick Horn —-either knowingly or accidentally failed to hand over an essential piece of exculpatory evidence—-namely the confession to a related killing by the prosecution’s star witness.

This is complicated case, and Miranda is not a good guy. Here’s how the LA Times explains it in yesterday’s editorial:

[Adam] Miranda is not a sympathetic symbol for abolishing the death penalty. Jurors were presented with a videotape at trial that showed him killing an Eagle Rock convenience store clerk; having committed such a brutal crime, he should never again walk free. But his sentence — death, and not life without parole — was based in part on another killing. The letter found in the prosecutor’s file, but never shared with the defense as required by law and thus never considered by the sentencing jury, contained evidence of another man’s admission to that crime.

In other words, Miranda is a stone killer who deserves life without possibility of parole. But, given the laws of the state, the central issue around which his death sentence was built, was entirely false.

Scarily, it was only the nearly two decades of pro bono digging on the part of entertainment lawyer George Hedges, that got Miranda off death row. Here’s what Hedges told Business Wire:

“We have been through a 20-year struggle to locate evidence the DA’s office intentionally withheld that showed our client did not commit the murder that placed him on death row 26 years ago,” said Mr. Hedges. “The case reveals an outrageous miscarriage of justice.”

“It took us years to force the DA’s office to turn over the Miranda files, and there in the back of one of the files was an envelope containing a confession to the murder by the star witness the prosecutors used to condemn our client to death,” added Mr. Bensinger. “It shows just how corrupt the system is. Without an all-out legal assault our client would have been put to death years ago for a crime he didn’t commit.”

And if that wasn’t bad enough, here’s the twist to the story:

The main witness in Miranda’s murder trial (the murder for which he was righteously convicted), was a woman named Donna Navarro who was working as a stripper at the time of the trial, but who happened in on the scene of the crime, and had the courage to come forward in order to testify to what she saw.
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In 2001 Education Week told this story about the Bush Administration’s decision to be hard core in its enforcement of one part of the Higher Education Act.

When police found a small amount of marijuana residue in her car the day before her 19th birthday, Marisa Garcia was handed a ticket and sent on her way. After she was convicted of drug possession and paid a $415 fine, Ms. Garcia thought the incident could be put behind her.

But the California State University-Fullerton student later discovered that her minor scrape with the law had cost her much more: Ms. Garcia ended up losing her eligibility for federal student financial aid because of a change three years ago in the Higher Education Act.

“It was the first time I had ever been in trouble with the law,” said Ms. Garcia, who worked extra hours in a flower shop and turned to her family to help pay her tuition and expenses. “When I found out that if I was a murderer or child molester I would still be eligible, I really got mad.”

Hard to blame her. With cases like Garcia’s in mind, college students, financial-aid associations, and civil rights groups have been working since then to challenge or overturn the provision—with no luck. (335 organizations from American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers to the United Church of Christ favor overturning it.)

According to Ed Week, even Republican Congressman Mark Souder, the guy who introduced the 1998 legislation, has indicated that the law was never intended to “reach back” and affect students with past drug convictions. It was meant, said Souder’s office, to derail applications if kids were convicted of drug crimes while they were applying for aid. (An explanation that has its own illogic, but whatever.)

Yesterday one of the constitutional challenges to the law finally had its day in court, but the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected it. A new Ed Week blog post has the details (and here’s the ruling itself).

Constitutionality aside, why in the world would we want to punish a kid for some past transgression—particularly a kid who is trying to go to college?

Remember that the average high school graduation rate in America’s largest cities is at 50 percent, with cities like Baltimore, Cleveland and Detroit graduating even fewer. It would seem that if a kid does graduate and wants to go to college, we should be moving heaven and earth to help.

But instead we’ve got this idiotic provision that since 2001 has reportedly denied aid to approximately 200,000 students.

These are the days when I start to think some of our lawmakers really don’t like our nation’s children very well.

PS: And how has the media covered the story? Other than Ed Week and the wonkiest law blogs—I’ve found nothing. (Obviously, there are more important topics to explore.)

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Much to the dismay of death penalty court watchers, myself included, today the Georgia Supreme Court denied Troy Anthony Davis a new trial in a 4-3 decision. Davis was to be executed this past July for the murder of a Savannah off-duty police officer, Mark Allen MacPhail, in a Burger King parking lot in August of 1989. Seven of the nine witness who originally identified Davis have since recanted or changed their testimony saying they were pressured by police to positively ID Troy Davis. Of the remaining two witnesses, one—Sylvester “Redd” Coles— is now accused by several new witnesses of being the actual shooter.

One new witness says that self-styled tough guy, “Redd” Coles, threatened her to keep her quiet, but with Davis’ impending execution she felt she had to come forward.

Interestingly, it was Coles who initially drew police attention to Davis. Hours after the shooting, he and his lawyer went to the police and said he saw Davis pull the trigger. Police never looked at Coles for the crime, according to a two part series in the Atlanta Journal Constitution.

Three other new witnesses stepped forward after the trial to say that Coles confessed to the murder and bragged that he’d pinned it on another guy, reports the AJC.

There was no physical evidence linking Davis, a former coach in the Savannah Police Athletic League who had signed up for the Marines, to the crime, and the murder weapon was never found. A lawyer for Davis has admitted that, because of severe budget cuts, he did not have resources needed to properly defend his client.

Two of the original jurors who convicted Davis have signed sworn affidavits saying that based on the recanted testimony, he should not be executed. “In light of this new evidence,” wrote one juror, “I have genuine concerns about the fairness of Mr. Davis’ death sentence.”

Part of the reason Davis has not received a new trial has to do with a set of legal technicalities, explained Time Magazine in this July 2007 article.

William S. Sessions, former federal judge and Director of the FBI, was one of those who expressed deep dismay over today’s decision. “There are few more serious violent crimes than the murder of a police officer who selflessly risks everything to protect his community,” said Sessions. “However, justice can only be done if we are absolutely certain that the right person has been convicted of the crime, and a number of important questions about whether Troy Anthony Davis is actually guilty have been asked - and deserved answers. Today’s decision by the Georgia Supreme Court is a missed opportunity to reaffirm the state’s commitment to honest justice.”

Sessions is a member of a bipartisan Death Penalty Committee,sponsored by the Constitution Project (which includes supporters as well as opponents of capital punishment). The committee unanimously concluded in its report that “[s]tate and federal courts should ensure that every capital defendant is provided an adequate mechanism for introducing newly discovered evidence that would otherwise be procedurally barred, where it would more likely than not produce a different outcome at trial, or where it would undermine confidence in the reliability of the sentence.”

Reasonable people would think so. Or are we really quite so comfortable executing someone who may be innocent?

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In one more instance of unilateral I-am-the-decider-ism in which George W. Bush knows better than everyone and presidential power is deemed to trump all others, Bush has declared the Navy sonar exercises off the California to be….let’s see if you can guess…. a matter of national security.

Here’s the background: A coalition of environmentalists had previously sued to limit the Navy’s use of loud, mid-frequency sonar, which can be harmful to whales and other marine mammals. The federal court sided with the pesky whale huggers and sent the issue to U.S. District Judge Marie Florence-Marie Cooper, who ruled this month that the Navy’s proposed plan to limit harm to whales — especially deep-diving beaked whales that have at times stranded and died after sonar exercises — were “grossly inadequate to protect marine mammals from debilitating levels of sonar exposure.”

In her ruling, Cooper didn’t shut down the exercises
but said the Navy must take certain precautions such as:

# To create a 12-nautical-mile no-sonar zone along the coast.
# Have trained lookouts watch for marine mammals starting 60 minutes before and then during exercises.
# Shut down sonar when mammals are spotted within 2,200 yards.

Cooper also barred the Navy from employing sonar in the Catalina Basin, an area that is home to what she called “a high density of marine mammals.” This area extends from Santa Catalina Island south to San Clemente Island.

This morning’s Washington Post explains more:

The Navy had received a federal exemption from the Marine Mammal Protection Act for the exercises, which are scheduled to continue through January 2009, but the NRDC and other groups filed suit under other environmental laws. The Navy will still have to convince federal judges that the exemptions are legal. The NRDC said yesterday that waivers are not allowed under the National Environmental Protection Act.

The NRDC also said the situation does not constitute an emergency, because the Navy is allowed to continue sonar training under Cooper’s ruling.

“The president’s action is an attack on the rule of law,” said Reynolds, director of the Marine Mammal Protection Project at the NRDC, which obtained the injunction against the Navy. “By exempting the Navy from basic safeguards under both federal and state law, the president is flouting the will of Congress, the decision of the California Coastal Commission and a ruling by the federal court.”

Interestingly, according to the LA Times, Cooper used the Navy’s research on the effects of sonar on marine life to make her decision:

Citing the Navy’s own studies, she concluded that upcoming exercises off Southern California “will cause widespread harm to nearly 30 species of marine mammals, including five species of endangered whales and may cause permanent injury and death.

So, there you have it: Waterboarding….the shredding of Habeas Corpus….and now a bunch of dead whales. All packaged as the price of freedom.

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Just when you think there can’t possibly be a more jaw-dropping bureaucratic screw-up than the Los Angeles Unified School District’s year-long inability to pay its teachers their correct salaries …the State of California treats us to this.

Here’s the deal, the The Service Employees International Union—SEIU—specifically, SEIU’s Local 1000 filed a lawsuit on Wednesday suing Arnold Schwarzenegger and the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation for…..are you ready for this? failing to figure out the correct release dates for around 33,000 inmates serving time in California prisons.

Yes, you read right. The CDCR has has around 33,000 people that they’re letting out….whenever.

These are people whose sentences were affected by two court rulings that mandated “good-time” credits for certain inmates. In the case of non-violent offenders this might mean as much as 50 percent off their sentences, or with violent offenders, as little as 15 percent.

When I got SEIU spokesman, Danny Beagle, on the phone, I asked for a random example of what we’re talking about. “Okay,” he said, “I have a case right here. This guy was supposed to have been released in….let’s see…. February of 2007. But instead he was released on, I think it says, early October of 2007. Yeah, October.” In other words, EIGHT MONTHS LATER than the guy—whoever he is—was mandated by the courts to be let out of lock-up.

That is, to put it in the mildest terms, unlawful

The reasons SEIU is bringing the suit has to do with the fact that it represents the correctional case records analysts who are supposed to figure this stuff out, but who say they are so understaffed and overloaded that they simply can’t do their jobs—and they don’t want to get sued because of it.

Plus the SEIU feels it would be a good thing if the state abided by the U.S. Constitution.

“The whole process of setting release dates is melting down,” said Marc Bautista, the Local 1000 VP who actually filed the suit in Sacramento Superior Court. Bautista estimates another 99 analysts are needed to remedy the shortfall. “We have repeatedly warned CDCR of this problem and they have refused to act.”

Oh, and did I mention the cost of these 33,000 little mistakes? Well, allow me to do a little math for you. The State Legislative Analyst estimates that each prisoner costs around $43,287 a year to incarcerate, or a little less than $120 a day. Now, when we think about Prisoner X, above, the guy who spent eight extra months in the pinta, that’s $120 times 30 days times 8 months—-or $28,800. Not chump change, but not going to break the state. (Although Prisoner X’s righteous civil lawsuit seeking damages for his eight wrongful months behind bars might be a tad more costly, but we won’t go there.)

Now, if we have 33,000 prisoner X’s serving that much extra prison time, it adds up to…..just under a billion dollars. ($950,400,000 to be exact.) But I’m sure the state couldn’t be SO stupid as to keep 33,000 people locked up for 8 months over their time.

We really, really hope not. But the truth is, it could be worse. For instance, with a non-violent drug case, four years might be dropped to two. Surely we aren’t keeping some people two extra years…..are we?

“We really don’t know,” said the SEIU’s Danny Beagle.

It turns out that, among the inmates they do know about, according to Thursday’s Sacramento Bee, one had his release date miscalculated by 643 days (nearly two years). Another stayed 366 days longer than his mandated sentence.

This is not reassuring.

Now remember, this is all happening in a state where the prisons are so overcrowded that last year the governor declared a state of emergency. To remedy the problem, the state legislature passed AB900, which will add 53,000 new inmate beds at an estimated cost to the California taxpayers of…$7.8 BILLion.

Note to Governor Arnold and Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez: Guys, before you go on your nice little $7.7 billion building spree to get us those new beds, do you think it might be a good idea to, like, first get rid of some of the 33,000 bed-using people who may or may not be legally mandated to be there?

Just curious.

By the way, bigtime kudos to SEIU Local 1000 for slapping these fools in Sacramento upside the head with this lawsuit.

I gotta go. This whole thing’s giving me a headache.

(Photo: Rich Pedroncelli / AP)

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The California fires are now estimated to cost in the billions, George Bush’s administration continues to poke sticks at Iran (then claims it’s a only negotiating ploy)….but there is one genuinely good piece of news today:

The Georgia Supreme Court ruled earlier today that Genarlow Wilson’s ten year sentence for having oral sex with another teenager (he was 17, she was 15), is indeed cruel and unusual, and the court ordered him released.

This afternoon, his mom drove over to the prison with a nice bunch of new clothes for her about to be released kid. Now he’s OUT! And, as you can see from the ABC photo above, his mom looks mighty happy about it!

(Earlier WLA stories on the subject here, here, here, here and here.)

Good going Georgia Supremes! (At least, the four of you that voted in favor of release.)

Here are some clips from the NY Times story.

In a 4-to-3 ruling, the court’s majority said the sentence was “grossly disproportionate” to the crime, which the justices said “did not rise to the level of culpability of adults who prey on children.”

…Writing for the majority in Friday’s 48-page opinion, Chief Justice Leah Ward Sears noted that changes to the law made after Mr. Wilson’s conviction “represent a seismic shift in the legislature’s view of the gravity of oral sex between two willing teenage participants.

“The severe felony punishment and sex offender registration imposed on Wilson make no measurable contribution to acceptable goals of punishment,” she wrote.

Very nicely said, Justice Ward.

NOTE: Chapeau Tip to commenter Woody for snapping me out of my deadline-ridden, post-fire haze long enough to notice this news.

(photo from ABC)

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As you go into the weekend, this is a wild ride of a story that is definitely worth reading. Most of the events have occurred in the last 48-hours. Here are the high points:

On Thursday, night the two chief execs of Phoenix New Times, Michael Lacey and Jim Larkin—guys whose company, New Times Media, also happens to own the LA Weekly, OC Weekly, and the Village Voice—were arrested in Phoenix by the Maricopa County sheriff’s deputies on charges of revealing grand jury information.

But, before we get to the grand jury info and the arrest, a little back story:

In 2004 and 2005, New Times did several articles investigating the famously colorful Sheriff of Maricopa County, Joe Arpaio.

And Joe really, really, REALLY didn’t like that.

For those of you unfamiliar, Joe Arpaio has long been a media darling for his quirky “tough-on-crime” methods, which include making jail prisoners wear pink underwear, putting them on stripe-suited “chain gangs,” having them sleep in tents in inclement weather, making them eat outdated and green-tinged bologna, and so on. If Joe Arpaio didn’t exist, someone would make him up.

Yet, although Arpaio presents himself as an amusing and eccentric tough dude able to give the bad guys what they deserve, there have been far darker stories of abuses, injuries and deaths at the hands of deputies in his jails, political dirty tricks, plus a string of curious financial dealings—all of which the alternative newspaper dutifully and rightly dug into. Here’s how former Phoenix New Times reporter (now Village Voice editor) Tony Ortega explains it:

Taking advantage of post-9/11 privacy statutes, for example, Arpaio had convinced the county to remove from public view records of the million-dollar commercial real-estate transactions he was making. How,[New Times reporter] Dougherty wondered, was a modestly paid county sheriff making those kinds of deals?

The issue that triggered the grand jury and the appointment of, in all seriousness, a special prosecutor (a person named Dennis Wilenchik who was supposedly hand chosen by Sheriff Joe, and is incidentally under investigation by the Arizona Bar) is the fact that the Phoenix New Times published Joe’s home address in one of their articles.

Nevermind that the thing is easily available online. (I found it here in less than three minutes. The property is listed under his wife Ava’s name. And a quick cross-check turned this up to verify it.)

Reality be damned, Jumping Joe persuaded the Maricopa County Attorney to charge New Times and reporter Dougherty with a felony for listing the address. And then came the Grand Jury and the subpoena delivered to New Times.

And what a subpoena it was!

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Here’s a passel of updates while I work on work on another deadline. Included is the latest on the Dream Act, creepy quotes from the Jena District Attorney, and more.
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THE DREAM ACT DIES (TEMPORARILY AT LEAST)

On Wednesday, Dick Durbin faced the fact that he was not able to get enough Republican support to keep the Dream Act alive as an amendment to the Defense authorization bill, and so Harry Reid told him to spike it. Then, on the Senate floor, Reid professed undying love for the Dream Act and said he’d “move the measure forward by Nov. 16.”

Mary Ann Zehr of Education Week, has good info on a few of the nuances of the bill including this:

While for years the DREAM Act contained a provision clarifying that states could provide in-state college tuition rates for undocumented students who were eligible to benefit from the act, that provision was dropped in the version of the act filed in the U.S. Senate last week

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JENA: THE GOOD NEWS AND THE REALLY CREEPY QUOTE

The good news out of Jena yesterday was that Mychal Bell’s, the main kid of the so-called Jena six, was released on $45,000 bail, after the DA on the case announced that he won’t fight the recent appellate court ruling demanding that Bell’s case be transferred to juvenile court.

The fact that District Attorney Reed Walters won’t push for adult charges means that Bell, who had faced a maximum of 15 years in prison on his aggravated second-degree battery conviction last month, instead can only be held in juvenile lock-up until he turns 21 if he is convicted in juvenile court.

The creepy quote came earlier in the week when the ever-chatty DA Walters had a lot more to say about various Jena-related issues, according to the Chicago Tribune:

Meanwhile, the Louisiana district attorney whose prosecution of the Jena 6 defendants sparked the civil rights protest declared that only through the intervention of Jesus Christ was Jena spared from a “disaster” last week when more than 20,000 African American demonstrators marched peacefully through the town.

“I firmly believe that had it not been for the direct intervention of the Lord Jesus Christ last Thursday, a disaster would have happened,” LaSalle Parish District Atty. Reed Walters told a nationally televised press conference.

Okie dokie, Reed, honey. We surely are grateful that Jesus saw fit to keep those rowdy dark-skinned people in line.

Good gravy.

For the rest click here
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As we think about what kind of Attorney General Judge Mukasey might make, it is worth reading today’s troubling New York Times story, the heart of which has to do with a student from San Diego, California, who was held in detention as a possible federal witness and it, appears, beaten, before being cleared of perjury five years later. (He has recently graduated with honors from San Diego State University). I’m running off for the day, so am not commenting further than simply to post the piece, but the situation speaks for itself:

The 21-year-old Jordanian immigrant was in shackles when he was brought into the courtroom of Judge Michael B. Mukasey in Federal District Court in Manhattan.

It was Oct. 2, 2001, and the prisoner, Osama Awadallah, then a college student in San Diego with no criminal record, was one of dozens of Arab men detained around the country in the days after the Sept. 11 attacks as potential witnesses in the terrorism investigation.

Before the hearing, Mr. Awadallah told his lawyer that he had been beaten in the federal detention center in Manhattan, producing bruises that were hidden beneath his orange prison jumpsuit. But when his lawyer told this to Judge Mukasey, the judge seemed little concerned.

Here’s the rest of the story.

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And that’s understating the matter.

The Restore Habeas measure would have passed the Senate today were it not for the fact that the majority of Republicans, afraid to break lock step with their masters, resorted to a filibuster, which the bill’s supporters—including Republican Arlen Spector—didn’t have the votes to counter.

This is from the account by the Washington Post:

The 56-43 vote fell short of the 60 needed to cut off debate and move to a final vote on the amendment to the Senate’s annual defense policy bill. But the measure did garner the support of six Republicans, a small victory for its supporters.

The gutsy and principled Republican senators who supported moving to a vote were: Spector, Chuck Hagel, Richard Lugar, Gordon Smith, Olympia Snowe and John Sununu.

As for the rest: Thank you very much, gentleman and ladies. We now remain less safe, less true to our most fundamental American principles, and less free.

Oh, yeah, and our soldiers are less safe too.

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